Day 46: Music Room

[moral_liberty]

Kaworu immediately gravitated towards the keyboard. It was not a piano, not truly, but it was attractive in all of the same ways. Music freed the mind from conscious thought, and Kaworu was feeling exceptionally weighed down by exactly that. There was a heaviness, as well as a lightness. He did not know where to begin approaching the situation with

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[its_the_mileage]

Well, how about that for coincidences. Something told Indy he wasn't getting the full story here, but he thought he could at least take Dent's response to mean no shooting sprees. "About the same thing, actually, although the guy I'm looking for is probably dead," he replied--then, for clarification, he added, "Looks like he didn't make it back from Doyleton," which was still his best theory. "I'm moving on tonight."

Those ruins were still bothering him, the thought of them coming up from the back of his mind at intervals. Even if it didn't hold any answers that would actually help him, Indy wanted to get back to the site and have another look around. He recognized that on some level he was trying to convince himself that the place could be useful just so he could satisfy his curiosity, but you never knew. There was always a chance.

Would taking Dent with him be worthwhile? The gun could come in handy--next time they might run across worse than a few imported jungle plants, however snakelike--but Indy wasn't sure he was prepared to trust Dent after that stunt in the pet shop. Had it just been an isolated incident?

And along the lines of figuring out what the guy was like... "You weren't one of the ones who went on 'vacation' yesterday, were you? Somehow I can't picture it." Brainwashed Dent would probably be a real sweetheart whose hobby was kissing babies or something.

[unheroed]

It was sobering to hear that Jones was looking for a dead man. Harvey wasn't heartless, after all, and he got the feeling that whoever Jones was trying to find was probably an upstanding person who didn't deserve to get torn to pieces by zombies, if that was really what had happened to him. "Who is it?" he asked without really thinking. It was hardly his business, but there was always that chance that he'd run into whoever it was. He didn't care, not really, but it wouldn't be any skin off his back to at least let the other man know if he'd seen the person or not.

Though he had to wonder: had something happened to Batman as well? Jason apparently hadn't seen the guy around for a while, which could mean all sorts of things. Harvey hoped the vigilante hadn't gone and gotten himself killed somehow. That would have just been so anticlimactic, and after everything else Batman had lived through, it just seemed inconceivable that he'd fall down and die so easily.

When the term 'vacation' was brought up (and Harvey could pretty much hear the quotations in Jones' voice), he had a moment of confusion before he realized what the man was referring to. It was whatever Franziska had been talking about, but Harvey still didn't know too much about what had happened.

"Me? No. I'm still kind of fuzzy on the details, actually. People got brainwashed or something?" It seemed par for the course in this place, and he was just happy that he'd been unaffected. "I'm guessing you dodged the bullet too?" he asked in return. Maybe bringing up gun metaphors around Jones wasn't the best idea, but it didn't occur to Harvey.

[its_the_mileage]

"My old roommate, Adam Pierson," Indy clarified, then--might as well--added, "About six feet tall, dark hair, British accent." He wasn't holding out much hope that Dent or anyone else had seen Pierson, but the description was rote by now anyway. Might be good to keep it floating around--make the point to Landel and his goons that disappearances didn't go unnoticed or unquestioned.

Pipe dreams, probably, Indy thought. The chances of his finding out anything they didn't want him to know were probably slim at best.

"Let me know if you hear anything, but I wouldn't hold your breath." Not that he expected Dent to, really. "Sounds like people who are gone that long usually don't come back. Like I said, I've got other things to look for now."

Didn't Dent read the bulletin board? Someone should get a newsletter started one of these days. "Something like that. Ever had a visitor here?" Indy leaned back in his chair--settling in to talk like an old man. "If so, you've got the idea. Apparently they all just 'remembered' their 'real lives' and decided that everything they'd experienced up until then was some kind of delusion. By this morning it'd all worn off." He had dodged the bullet, in fact, but Indy figured that should be clear enough by the way he was talking.

[unheroed]

Oh, it was a roommate. Well, Harvey thought there was a pretty straightforward answer there. If the man wasn't in Jones' room with him at dinner every night, then he obviously wasn't here. He took in the physical description nonetheless, but he hadn't met anyone like that during his time here. (He would have remembered the accent, at the very least.)

"Yeah, if he's not sharing your room anymore, I wouldn't get your hopes up," Harvey agreed, figuring that Jones was the kind of person who appreciated when people were honest with him rather than giving him false hope. He'd already seemed to accept for himself that the man was gone, and at least he had the resolve to not break down about it. Though for all Harvey knew, Jones hated the guy and just wanted to find him to get his flashlight back.

When Jones asked if he'd had a visitor, Harvey was quick to shake his head. And it was a good thing, too. He couldn't imagine who might come see him, but whoever it was? Well, he wasn't going to like it. Maybe the institute was smart enough to realize that, at least.

"Sounds fun," he responded with a frown. "Guess it's not too much of a concern if it wore off that quickly, though." If it had happened to someone who Franziska knew, then she was probably not quite as pissed at Landel today. Or maybe she'd be even more upset that the Head Doctor was apparently just playing with them. Though wasn't that what he'd been doing from the start?

Though now that he thought of it, Jones might be curious to hear about the female prosecutor. "I ran into Franziska yesterday and she had something to say about it. I guess it happened to someone she knows." If Jones was that curious about what had gone on the day before, then he could try and get a hold of her to talk about it.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy decided additional information might be in order. The answers he was looking for might concern Dent as much as him, so he explained, "I'm not really expecting him to come back, I just want to know what happened to him. There are a lot of alternatives, and most of them don't have very comforting implications for any of the rest of us."

Which was the core of the problem, from Indy's perspective. If Pierson had just had an unlucky break and ended up as a midnight snack for a zombie, it'd be regrettable but somehow reassuring--clear cause, clear outcome, and all you had to do to avoid it was keep your eyes open and carry a dog leash around. If they'd done something else with him, there were no guarantees that the same thing (brainwashing and release? experimentation? Indy could think of plenty of increasingly paranoid scenarios) couldn't happen to any other patient. There but for the grace of God, as it were.

"Assuming it doesn't last any longer next time," he commented grimly, not too concerned that he was making the assumption that there would be a next time. With all the brainwashing that had already happened, it seemed almost self-evident that there would be more to follow sooner or later.

Franziska, huh? Indy made a mental note to introduce her to Lunge if they didn't already know each other; they'd probably get along great. "How's she doing? Have anything interesting to say?" He was more concerned with whether she'd turned up any useful information than how she was enjoying her stay at Landel's, but he figured he'd let Dent sort out what of their conversation was important.

[unheroed]

Even if Jones' reasons held a certain amount of weight, Harvey was still surprised by the whole thing. When his own roommate had disappeared, he hadn't put much thought into it. He'd figured Godot had just vanished like so many of the other patients here seemed to, and that had been the end of it. But Jones was making an extra effort, and it gave Harvey the feeling that he'd been a bit closer to the man than he was really letting on.

"I'm guessing you already tried the board," he responded dryly. It was never much help, but at least it seemed simple enough to communicate with Jason over it. That was generally the only thing Harvey used it for -- unless something really out of the ordinary was going on, like that night when he'd seen Rachel and heard her last words. "I'll keep an eye out," he said, more to put the other man at ease than because he was personally invested. It wasn't that hard of a promise to keep, which was the only reason he made it.

The idea of yesterday's events happening again in the future was something Harvey hadn't put much thought to. If he hadn't been affected this time, then chances were he'd weasel his way through next time, too. Though maybe he shouldn't assume too much. Still, it wasn't like they had any control over it, so what was the point in getting worked up about it?

"She's... still insecure about her age and her gender, still hoping to bring Martin Landel to justice," Harvey said with a shrug. That last part was her words, not his, but it was pretty amusing, how determined she was. "We didn't talk for too long," he explained.